Cheeta isn't the real deal

The story does not begin in Hollywood, where it's possible, though by no means certain, that Cheeta became famous.

It does not begin in Palm Springs, where Cheeta lives like other retirees.

The story begins 2,800 miles to the east on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. There, author R.D. Rosen received a phone call in spring 2007 from a woman, an agent who said she represented an ape.

Rosen had written a series of mystery novels and had just wrapped up a well-received book about an orphaned buffalo. But like any self-respecting writer, he was in something of a panic over what he'd do next, and that's why the agent's words - "I have your next book" - sounded like the strings of a harp.

The subject was Cheeta, a chimpanzee snatched from the wilds of Liberia by a moderately successful animal trainer named Tony Gentry.

Cheeta had appeared in dozens of films - opposite Rex Harrison in "Doctor Doolittle," opposite Ronald Reagan in "Bedtime for Bonzo" and, in the role that made a legend of a star, opposite Johnny Weissmuller in a dozen Tarzan films.

Cheeta lived the good life, so good it had earned him a spot in the record books: the oldest known nonhuman primate in the world.

For much of his life, he lived on a compound of sorts near Thousand Oaks in Southern California.

There, as they got on in years, he and Gentry, his purported captor, became like father and son, so close that Cheeta was said to have pulled Gentry's wheelchair around the yard after Gentry became too debilitated to wheel it himself.

Gentry was convinced that no one could ever care for the old boy as he had. So the trainer stipulated in his will that Cheeta be euthanized upon Gentry's death.

A soft-spoken animal lover and trainer named Dan Westfall, a relative of Gentry, pleaded with him to spare Cheeta's life. Gentry relented and not long before his death in April 1991, he sent Cheeta to the desert to live at a sanctuary Westfall had opened for show-business primates.

Performing chimpanzees often outlive their careers by 40 years; most go on to sad and isolated lives, not quite socialized with either man or primate. Westfall, like many others in today's Hollywood, believes it is unacceptable to wrest chimpanzees out of the wild.

In 2001, Cheeta landed in the Guinness World Records, and today he is - according to his handlers, anyway - an astonishing 76 years old. His fans are legion.

Cheeta's "birthday" has been celebrated, not on the anniversary of his birth, but on April 9, the anniversary of the day he supposedly landed in the United States. Rosen figured that point - the dramatic account of Cheeta's arrival, with Gentry, according to legend, hiding him under a jacket on the Pan American flight - was a logical place to begin his research.

Discrepancy emerges

It didn't take long for the first discrepancy to surface. It turned out, Rosen said, that the sort of flight Gentry had described wasn't available commercially until 1939 - seven years after Gentry supposedly smuggled Cheeta into the U.S.

He pressed ahead, flying to California to visit Cheeta at the sanctuary. He also began watching Cheeta's films. Both "Bedtime for Bonzo" and "Doctor Doolittle" featured chimps that were very young; Cheeta would have been 19 and 35, respectively, at the time.

Rosen thought: Could this be?

In his apartment, he began watching the Tarzan films again, remote control in hand, pausing each time a chimp could be seen in profile.

"Then I'd walk over from the bed with a glossy photograph of Cheeta," he said, "and compare the ears."

It was not, he determined, the same chimp.

In November 2007, Rosen tracked down veteran animal trainers who said they knew Cheeta well. The chimp, they told him, had been a performer at Pacific Ocean Park, the old Santa Monica attraction, and had never been in films, Rosen said.

It was Gentry, Rosen said, who'd passed Cheeta off as a star.

Rosen's best guess is that Cheeta was born around 1960, not 1932, performed as a pier attraction for a few years and was then given to Gentry by another trainer when Pacific Ocean Park closed in 1967.

A nice ape, Rosen said, but not a star.

In late 2007, Rosen mustered the courage to tell Westfall of his findings.

"He inherited a lie," Rosen said. "It took on a life of its own."

Entertaining doubts

Rosen helped Westfall change the language on Cheeta's Web site to reflect the doubts that had been raised.

Rosen covered some of his research costs by writing a tell-all of sorts in December 2008 in the Washington Post's Sunday magazine. He never sold the book idea.

Rosen's article landed at an exciting time for the chimp and his fans. Another book about Cheeta - a ghost-written, tongue-in-cheek "autobiography" - is scheduled for U.S. release in March.

In interviews, Cheeta's backers took shots at Rosen's credibility, suggesting that he might have sour grapes because of the "autobiography" and insisting that there are still many unanswered questions.

Cheeta, meanwhile, like actor Greta Garbo in her last days, is in seclusion.

His modest, single-story sanctuary is tucked away in a quiet residential enclave in Palm Springs.

Westfall refused to comment when reached by telephone, and he did not answer the door at the sanctuary.